Falling From High Places
by coldqueen
Summary: Clint had never seen anyone fight like her, and there was a knot in his chest as he watched.


**Title: **Falling From High Places

**Genre: **Movie

**Series: **The Avengers

**Characters: **Clint Barton (Hawkeye), Natasha Romanoff (Black Widow), Agent Phil Coulson

**Spoilers: **N/A

**Rating: **PG

**Summary: **Clint had never seen anyone fight like her, and there was a knot in his chest as he watched.

**Disclaimer: **I don't own it.

* * *

She was used to being the center of attention, fire danced in her hair and eyes and undulated through her muscles with a grace that demanded attention because it was both alluring and dangerous and anyone with sense could see that. The first time he saw her, though, she was nothing more than a flash of red on the edge of his scope because his entire focus was on his target, an African dictator with a penchant for genocide and a S.H.I.E.L.D.-painted target on his heart. The research technicians had done the best job they could considering the dictator was paranoid and had hired freelance commandos and assassins to protect him; half of his guards had records blacked out by Clint's own government and the other half had no records at all. The dossiers listed abilities and known aliases, blurry pictures taken from a distance, and if this assignment hadn't been top listed as a rush job he'd have gone over every inch of the reports but there had been no time.

His hands were steady as he lined his arrow, his mind calculating the wind shear from this height by the way the air moved against the hairs of his arm and he automatically adjusted his aim two feet west and a foot lower than his actual target to compensate. With the adjustment he was looking right at her, and her muscles tensed under her skin as if she could feel the weight of his eyes on her. He recognized a killer when he saw one, but he'd never seen one wrapped in such a gorgeous package. She was all porcelain skin and hair like blood and the look in her eyes promised more would be spilled. Her fingers were curled loosely at her sides but just between her fingers the hard shine of a metal barrel could be seen. High cheekbones and a soft pouting mouth aside, her eyes were cold and measuring as she studied the crowd in front of the stage where his target had just begun addressing the crowd.

Clint didn't understand the language the man was speaking but she clearly did. Her head tilted just a bit and her expression didn't change, but her eyes shifted from the crowd to the podium. The muscles in her right arm pulsed as her hand curled tighter around the gun hidden by her sleeve but she didn't make a move. He wondered if she'd somehow made him, but discarded that thought. He was six hundred feet away, tucked under the wings of a massive gargoyle on the rooftop, the shadows blurring his dark clothing to invisible and his skin painted with the same shade. His hands tightened on the arrow and the string cut into his bare fingers as he pulled the spine to the correct tautness, every frisson of energy in perfect alignment to strike the heart of his target without error.

The arrow whistled through the air, followed by the dull thwack of the string returning from the strike, but the arrow embedded harmlessly in the stage, unnoticed among the stomping feet of panicked spectators. After a few seconds, for the first time in a long time, Clint was shocked to find that he had _missed_ his target. Just as quickly as he had found himself dumbfounded he found the answer to his sudden ineptitude. The little redhead had put a bullet between the target's eyes and was fighting her way to the door, despite her small stature, successfully. She was vicious, her tiny hands snapping bones and breaking necks and not even growing winded in her efforts. In less than a minute she had disappeared into the dark streets surrounding the Capitol building, leaving a scene of panic and destruction behind her.

Clint mechanically broke down his crossbow and hastened to do the same. This country was about to become a sinkhole of ambition and the borders would be difficult to cross until a clear leader killed their way to the top. He ran for the edge of the roof, knotting his nylon rope around one of the stone statues before rappelling down the building. He blended just as easily with the shadows of the street as he did of the roof; no one ever saw him.

* * *

"What was he saying?"

He was analyzing the surveillance feed from the rally and he'd watched it so many times he can now pinpoint the exact moment that she turned. It's not any change in her expression; there was no change in her expression. Her lips stay partially curved and slightly parted, slicked with a matte rose color draws attention away from her eyes. She does it on purpose he can tell, because her eyes are what gives her away. She's scanning the crowd coldly, searching for potential attackers, but before the man's speech has finished echoing over the people in front of the stage she's put that stare directly on her employer.

"Nothing good," Coulson answered from somewhere behind him, though he didn't startle Clint; he'd been expecting his handler to find him at some point during their flight back to Headquarters. "That is, of course, why we sent you to dispatch him."

"He's been dispatched," Clint pointed out, deftly manipulating the footage on the screen to rewind ten seconds just so he could watch her eyes shift from her assigned target to the one she took from him again.

"By the Black Widow."

Clint spun around in his chair, tilting his head as he tried to gauge just how serious Coulson was being with him. His handler, and friend, had a very dry sense of humor and not even years of working together had given him a solid grasp of when Coulson was being funny and when he was being serious. "_The _Black Widow? Killed-a-guy-by-snapping-his-neck-with-her-thighs Black Widow?"

"The very one," Coulson assured him, taking the seat next to him and watching the footage play on the screen again and again.

"What did he say? Right before she killed him?"

"I don't know. I don't speak Lingala," Coulson admitted. "I can have it translated if you'd like."

Clint shrugged and shook his head. "I'm just curious."

"She is..." Coulson hesitated and Clint watched in amazement as his friend struggled to find words. He'd never seen Coulson at a loss for what to say.

"She is what?"

"Dangerous. Ruthless. Beautiful. Deadly. She is capable of killing anyone, and willing to do it for the right price." Coulson tapped the screen in front of them. "She is also amazing to watch in action; a killing machine."

"Those are very strong opinions," Clint noted.

"S.H.I.E.L.D. has had their eyes on her for a while."

"That doesn't sound good."

"There is no line she will not cross. Eventually she'll cross ours."

Clint shook his head, nodding at the melee that broke out on screen in the seconds after her shot shattered the nasal palate of her employer. "Maybe there is a line she won't cross."

"Or maybe he accidentally stepped on her toes on his way to the stage. She could've killed him for anything."

"True," Clint agreed, but really didn't think so. Coulson was a professional bureaucrat, though he'd had his share of combat too. He wasn't an assassin, not like Clint, not like the Black Widow.

Sometimes people who kill for a living lose their sense of respect for the sanctity of life. It becomes something that can be bought and sold and the abyss between caring and killing becomes so wide that it can never be breached again. The people who lose that respect use the act of taking a life to sustain the sense of connection with the world around them that they can no longer establish themselves. They start to like what they are doing, start to enjoy it, and they are the people that Clint kills. He knows what they look like, how they move, how they think; she is not one of them. She moves with deadly grace because she is trained to do so, but she does not feel anything while she does it. If she was killing for something personal, for something trivial, Clint would be able to see it in the kill.

"If she comes up on the list, I want her," Clint decided, calmly clasping his hands and resting his chin there to study Coulson's face as Coulson studied his.

"Why?"

"Call it professional curiosity."

"Is that all it is?"

"Yes."

Coulson knew he was lying. Clint could read killers, but Coulson was his friend and could read him.

He didn't call him on it, however. A smart handler knows when not to cross the line.

* * *

Review, please.


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